


Before the looming forevers

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Fear, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Introspection, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resilience, Standing before another battle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-04-01 04:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13990446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: The Paladins reflect on themselves, their fears and their hopes, as another major battle stares them down. Each trying to come to terms with what's standing before them, the things they left behind, and what they're still searching for through it all.





	1. Blue

**Author's Note:**

> So, I was just taken with this idea of writing each of the Paladins on the eve of some major battle, of the ideas that might float through their minds, and the moments they need to take for themselves. Because it's a heavy burden they bear, and like anything else, needs time to be broken down and made sense of. . .so, this is just taking a snapshot of some of those moments. As such these are simple drabbles, but something I wanted to indulge in. I hope you enjoy them!

The universe is vast, and some days, he thinks it’s the sort of thing that swallows lives whole without much care. Kind of like those great blue whales, just shoveling water into their mouths and filtering out all the tasty bits. After all, what has he ever been but a small speck in the world of things called great. At some points, he feels like he had forgotten that reaching for the sun would likely lead to scalding the skin from his very hands. Icarus fell too, all melted wings and shattered hopes.

Lance wonders if their fall is just around the corner.

But he’s already left a trail of grief in his wake, and he tries not to think about them. About the ones he left behind. All because of some shotgun madness that put one gaping hole into the theory of human beings standing at the top of the food chain. Earth’s perhaps, but on the cosmic scale, they’re wolves at best. Terrifyingly efficient when working in tandem, but still just a breath away from universal extinction. 

If the Galra ever put their sights on Earth before they could set things right. . .

A shiver works its way down his spine, jumping one vertebra after another just like his little sister skipped hopscotch boxes. It turns a bit unsteady, just around mid-back, and causes him to draw in a sharp breath all in the hopes of stabilizing himself. He takes another, then another, and finally rolls onto his back to stare at the world he once knew. His bedroom ceiling provides a wonderful blank canvas, letting him sketch out memories in color across its surface. Chasing his brothers through the waves on the ocean’s shore. Shoveling ice cream into his mouth until his head rang with frigid protests and his sister’s laughter. He remembers her face scrunched up by the same icy headache, and still, it couldn’t stop her from giggling at his own expression of self-induced pain. She had laughed, her mouth ringed with chocolate sauce, and eventually, he had succumbed to it as well. Because he had known the brain freeze would encase his thoughts in ice and put a chill on his tongue, but it still couldn’t stop him from engaging in it with her. Not when she had stood there, trembling just moments before, wounded by the weight of the world with her scraped knees and dirtied palms and just looking for someone to save her. 

He had been a hero once. 

He just doesn’t know if he can be the hero the universe needs right now. It hits him in moments like this when the idea of forever seems like it could be cut impossibly short by one wrong move, one careless decision. One misguided hand of fate. It may not even be _his_ forever, but one among the many, and he finds that a bitter pill to swallow. Hoping that his forever continues trudging on down the lanes of Time while another had just been ruthlessly cut off from the flow. 

But he’s not about to go crying selfless now. Not when one selfish wish could save a universe. So, he lives to breathe through another day, and maybe there will come a time when Home will loom once more on his horizon, big and blue and beautiful. Lance doesn’t even remember getting a chance to look back at Earth, but he didn’t think there would be a need for goodbyes at that moment. He had never really thought the universe could be this immense or his life so small. As he lays here though, with his memory painting pictures across the ceiling and his heart trying to remember there’s no need to rush through its beats, he thinks about it all. 

About how goodbyes often come too late. (He’s never been the best with timing if he’s honestly speaking and it’s always easier to be honest when it’s just you and an empty room and The End singing from tomorrow’s battlefield.) He thinks about how they could have just been labeled _missing_ rather than lost. Because missing somehow implies that something could be found, but _lost_ has the weight of Death behind it. Lost souls, lost lives, lost memories. Missing burns with hope; lost is simply one step away from snuffing it out forever. 

He hopes they called him missing. And he hopes they’ll save the universe before the Galra ever think of turning Earth into a bargaining chip for their empire’s gains.

He hopes that faith hasn’t been misplaced in the man he could be.

That’s when a sigh bubbles up out of his throat, and he shuts his eyes to it all. Hours ago, he had brushed the team off with talk of beauty sleep, but what he needed most was a moment to reflect and recollect, to burn into his heart all the reasons for carving out better tomorrows. What he needed was a chance to swallow down his doubts (Mary Poppins doesn’t visit space apparently, because he has yet to find anything sweet enough to make it go down without a fight). A chance to break them down into their too-sharp components and dull the edges just enough to make sure they don’t cripple him when the shot that counts is needed the most. 

Pulling his arm from behind his head, Lance lifts it towards the ceiling, fingers spread wide and ready to grasp at the infinity beyond memories and present moments. His eyes open and fix on the limitless above, the one he remembers as endlessly blue and dazzling with its glints of sunlight. He points his index and middle fingers, lifts his thumb perfectly perpendicular to them, then slowly curls the last two digits towards his palm. One breath in. Another out. 

Steady. . .steady. . .

“Bang.”


	2. Shiro Pt 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there's been a lot of information released in the wake of Voltron's SDCC panel and preview episode. This particular chapter does play with some of that new information, so if you wish to avoid any spoiler territory, I suggest waiting to read this until after the new season drops on August 10th. That being said, I love this man, and I love everything he has powered through ;;
> 
> And as usual, you can find me over on Twitter [@bymidnightflame](https://twitter.com/ByMidnightFlame)

A candle may be meant to burn out at the end, but it still provides light in its dying.

*

Time is a relentless monster, chewing up the hours he still has left like a wolf pack stripping sinew and marrow from bones. Picking away at his minutes, bit by bit. Shiro doesn’t know how many are still in his bank. It’s an account he doesn’t have access to but he knows the funds are limited, and one day, he’ll go for the withdrawal and find his hands empty. Call that the driving force. Because when you see the end there along the horizon, a deep cliff dive into the unknown, you know there’s no escaping the course you’re on.

So, he’d rather breathe deep of each moment and put in for the good fight until the world robs him of both. 

Maybe that’s what makes these moments all the harder to sit still in - the countdown to the end, the nightmares chasing down his thoughts. Maybe it’s all about running from something as much as it ever was about running towards it. Trying to buy enough time for one thing while running out the seconds on another.

It’s all about balance, Shiro knows.

And the seconds matter. He doesn’t waste them on sleep. He can’t really. There are things to be done, and names to be made, and a team that needs to know how to be a team before he goes. And that’s an inevitability. His end. 

Well, any of them could end. This is war, and war has never been known for favoritism but rather its impartiality. Perhaps you get a little lucky and avoid the blast that was meant to disable your ship. Or the shot that finds you only grazes rather than pierces vital organs. Or you learn how to fight, and fight smart enough to keep yourself alive against enemies unknown yet each seeking to end you all because of the mere title of Champion.

None of them should end before he does, however. That’s not how this story goes. He is the one with a countdown stamped on his heart, and as muscles begin to fade, and neuromuscular functions go haywire, so too will his heart succumb to the predictably unpredictable. That is, he knows the progression of his lifeline. He just doesn’t know which parts will short-circuit on him first. 

One day, though. And wars aren’t won in a single day. Certainly, a crippling blow can be delivered to a front, but even that requires time, and the Galra have had millennia, not a year of which was spent resting on their laurels. Chances are he will default on his allotted time well before this war sees its end, and. . .

He takes in a deep breath and stares up at the overhead lights. They’re a glaring yellow-dusted white, and sometimes Shiro thinks he can see it all ending in the brightness blinding him. Then, he closes his eyes, and all he sees is the desert backlit by a dying sun with endless tracks to be run, testing his every skill. It’s the sort of place that makes him feel all the more alive for being there. Never had it been about conquering the land, but conquering himself as he pushed limits. It was about seeing just how far he could go with what he had, and it never disappointed him. The desert had been freedom, and it had been the start of a new generation. . .

He won’t see it again.

The fingers of his right arm curl in towards his palm. His eyes open and the glaring white of the world washes back over him. Somewhere in the back of his head, a clock hand ticks in the shadows of another monster waiting to awaken. That’s when he pushes off of the bed and moves to a clear space on the floor. Donning his armor takes only moments. He’s replayed the act of it, over and over, in his head. Where to start, how to end, the exact number of seconds it all takes. Shiro keeps that number as a guru does his mantras, running it through his mind like a news ticker. He tests it every time he dresses for battle, taking note of any hang-ups, any cost of time. And then he figures out how to avoid it on the next round.

This time, it took him sixty-two seconds. 

Off it goes. He takes a breath. The smallest curve of a smile takes the corner of his mouth. A little beleaguered, part bittersweet amusement. Peeking out of his lips a bit like an old fear so well known he could almost call it a friend. Shiro dresses again, and this time, drops to the floor, burpee-style, and there he stays. 

Sixty-one seconds. Sixty-one push-ups. 

The countdown starts in his mind, punctuated by a heavy exhale out as each number falls to the one below it. Up, then down, he goes. Muscles burn, his breath remains rigidly controlled, and as the number drops and the clock keeps ticking away in his head, he builds himself up stronger than all the moments that came before it.

And he imagines desert flying by, dust storms building in his wake, and when it all hits zero, he’ll take that final plunge. It will take control. It will take perfect timing. It will take knowing and living the moment. But more than that, it will require faith.


End file.
